'I said before, Rachel, that I liked you. You are one of us, Rachel. You are beautiful, wayward, and daring, and one way or another, misfortune always waylays us; and I have, I know it, calamity before me. Death comes to other women in its accustomed way; but we have a double death. There is not a beautiful portrait in Brandon that has not a sad and true story. Early death of the frail and fair tenement of clay--but a still earlier death of happiness. Come, Rachel, shall we escape from the spell and the destiny into solitude? What do you think of my old plan of the valleys and lakes of Wales? a pretty foreign tongue spoken round us, and no one but ourselves to commune with, and books, and music. It is not, Radie, altogether jest. I sometimes yearn for it, as they say foreign girls do for convent life.' 'Poor Dorcas,' said Rachel, very softly, fixing her eyes upon her with a look of inexpressible sadness and pity. 'Rachel,' said Dorcas, 'I am a changeable being--violent, self-willed. My fate may be quite a different one from that which _I_ suppose or _you_ imagine. I may yet have to retract _my_ secret.' 'Oh! would it were so--would to Heaven it were so.' 'Suppose, Rachel, that I had been deceiving you--perhaps deceiving myself--time will show.' There was a wild smile on beautiful Dorcas's face as she said this, which faded soon into the proud serenity that was its usual character. 'Oh! Dorcas, if your good angel is near, listen to his warnings.' 'We have no good angels, my poor Rachel: what modern necromancers, conversing with tables, call "mocking spirits," have always usurped their place with us: singing in our drowsy ears, like Ariel--visiting our reveries like angels of light--being really our evil genii--ah, yes!' 'Dorcas, dear,' said Rachel, after both had been silent for a time, speaking suddenly, and with a look of pale and keen entreaty--'Beware of Stanley--oh! beware, beware. I think I am beginning to grow afraid of him myself.' Dorcas was not given to sighing--but she sighed--gazing sadly across the wide, bleak moor, with her proud, apathetic look, which seemed passively to defy futurity--and then, for awhile, they were silent. She turned, and caressingly smoothed the golden tresses over Rachel's frank, white forehead, and kissed them as she did so. 'You are better, darling; you are rested?' she said. 'Yes, dear Dorcas,' and she kissed the slender hand that smoothed her hair. Each understood that the conversation on that theme was ended, and somehow each was relieved. CHAPTER XXXIV. SIR JULIUS HOCKLEY'S LETTER. Jos. Larkin mentioned in his conversation with the vicar, just related, that he had received a power of attorney from Mark Wylder. Connected with this document there came to light a circumstance so very odd, that the reader must at once be apprised of it.